


it's spring again

by blastellanos



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: A little fluffy, M/M, Magical Realism, Sorry this is kind of comedic, like not in a bad way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 04:24:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12975843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blastellanos/pseuds/blastellanos
Summary: "I can't believe you gothimbelieving in that fantasy story too, Dad."





	it's spring again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohtempora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohtempora/gifts).



> No slander intended. 
> 
> Title is from Lou Rawls's "Spring Again".

It starts when he's young-- too young to understand what's going on-- but everywhere he goes when he's outside he hears it. And he likes to imagine that he's Superman, and his superhearing is just picking up the random odd things that people say when they're in their private homes. 

Cooing over their adorable babies, thinking about the work that they have to do-- some obsessed with the shiny bits and bobs they see on the streets; pristinely cleaned windows and lost change and pieces of leftover tinsel when people put out their undecorated trees at the end of the Christmas season. 

Truthfully, if he'd been more aware of things, he might have realized the sort of narrow-focus of the commentary. He doesn't though and thinks that there's just some odd obsession in Memphis about worms and other kinds of bugs. 

And sometimes fish. 

And at night, the conversation settles down some, but most of the chatter is about mice, about little rodents that scurry in the night. They all sound predatory and scared and there’s something off about it. 

In the morning, he wakes up and he hears singing. An ode to the sun, to the day. 

Sometimes, it's honestly the only reason why Greg doesn't miss his alarm in the morning. 

He doesn't really _get it_ until he spends the summer with his grandpa up in the mountains. He's sitting on a knotty pine picnic table, trying to get his phone connected enough so he can watch Rockies highlights. He's not having a lot of luck and the video keeps buffering, circling and circling. 

Maybe he'd just throw this phone off the mountain-- see how it likes that. 

That is, until he hears a kid screeching for help. It's so loud and sudden that it takes him by surprise. There's panic in it and Greg jumps up and pockets his phone, heading towards the sound. He grabs a baseball bat from beside the table and goes in search of the noise. 

He's confused when he reaches the place where the sound is the loudest and he doesn't see anything. But there's still something that sounds like panicked begging for help. He doesn't realize what it is until he sees a bird laying there in front of him. 

It's a small, still-fluffy little songbird of sorts, and its little beak is moving. Greg frowns and crouches down beside it. 

_"Help! Mama! Help! Mama! Help!"_ it keeps saying over and over and Greg can't help but frown. This is stupid, he's clearly hallucinating what was going on. He looks around at the trees, ensures there's no one else there. 

_"Hey, hey, stop-- what's wrong?"_

The bird stops squawking at him and it kind of twitches, hopping on little yellow feet. It understands him. How-- how does it understand him? More importantly how does he understand _it_?

_"I fall! I fall and I scared!"_

Greg frowns a little and rubs at the back of his neck. 

_"Alright, well, where'd you fall from?"_

_"The nest!"_ The bird looks like it's looking up and Greg looks at the tree. 

_"Alright… is it true that your mom will reject you if I touch you?"_

_"What?!"_

Greg winces. 

_"Okay, just relax."_

Greg scoops the bird up into his palm and then starts to climb the tree. He manages to scale it and he starts searching for a nest missing a baby. He only finds it because suddenly there's more squawks, a whole nest of them calling for their brother. 

Greg returns it to its family and frowns some more. He loses his footing when he's climbing down and breaks his arm. Which is when he tells his grandpa, who believes him, and his dad who rolls his eyes. 

"I can't believe you got _him_ believing in that fantasy story too, Dad." 

They get Greg an ice cream on the way home from the hospital. Grandpa tells him it skips a generation and not to worry. 

***

Greg has to learn to tune most of it out, which isn't as easy as it sounds, considering he's constantly bombarded with these distant conversations. It’s been happening forever, but he still slips up from time to time. Back in high school, he was sure some of his teammates had thought he was a whack job, always talking to himself. 

Spring is always the worst. 

In the winter months, it quiets down considerably, and it's almost a blissful respite from a somewhat strange thing. 

Then there's a flood of it and they're always-- _amorous_. It's-- not good. Especially in the morning. When they're doing warm-ups, and he's under a deluge of _”look at me! Look at me!!!”_ from every direction. He shields his eyes against the sun, trying to locate the particular offender at Steinbrenner. 

It's a particularly fat looking red-winged blackbird that's resting near the visitor's dugout. He sees him, sleek and shiny black with bright red along his wing, and a little bit of white on it. His yelling is insistent. 

_"I'm beautiful! Look at me!"_

_"No one is going to see you here!"_ he says to it-- more like shouts-- _"Do you see any females here?"_

The bird hops towards him. A heavy hand comes down on his shoulder. 

"What are you whistling at?" 

The bird flies away from Aaron with a caw of annoyance ( _"I was talking, jerk!"_ ) and Greg huffs, annoyed, and more than a little frustrated he'd been caught out. 

"I was just…" Greg trails off as he frowns a little and then he narrows his eyes at Aaron. "I don't owe you an explanation, man." 

"I didn't say anything." Aaron holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Greg keeps giving him a look, though, his hands going to his hips. Aaron reaches out and knocks him between his shoulder blades with a friendly pat. 

"Sorry." Greg pinches the bridge of his nose. "It's been a long day, sorry."

The blackbird comes back. 

_"Your friend is a big! Scary big!"_

_"Go away! You're bothering me."_

"Did you just um… whistle at that bird?" 

Greg frowns. He'd been talking to it, which he thought was low key, but apparently no. Apparently he sounded different to those surrounding him. 

"No?" 

_"Run away! He will eat you! Scary big!"_ The blackbird flaps his wings and gets into Aaron's face, squawking angrily and flapping his wings. _"Run! I distract!"_

_"Stop that!"_

The bird stops and lands on the ground between them. Aaron is giving Greg a look. Greg frowns and pats Aaron in the center of the chest with the palm of his hand. 

"Ah, I guess I have some explaining to do?" 

Aaron nods. 

In between them, the blackbird is squawking again. 

_"Your mate? Is he your mate?! He is pretty and BIG???"_

Greg's cheeks flare. Aaron can't understand the birds but Greg's sure that Aaron can see how embarrassed he is. 

_"Go **away!"**_

Greg is mortified.

The blackbird doesn't leave exactly, just flutters over to the place he'd started at and starts crying about a mate again. Greg groans in frustration. 

"I need Tylenol." 

***

It's a lot quieter in the clubhouse. 

There is still the faint sounds of birds outside, but it's always more manageable when he's inside, when the bird song doesn't filter through the thick walls of the clubhouse building. 

Aaron leads Greg over to his locker and hands him a couple Tylenol after rifling through his bag. Greg takes that and a bottle of water and sits down, with Aaron looming above him.

"So, your friend…" Aaron starts and Greg feels flustered. 

"He's not my friend. I've never met him before in my _life_ and I don't know what his problem was, he was just--" Greg stops suddenly, like his breath shorts out, when Aaron presses his finger to Greg's lip to shush him. 

He's thinking about what the blackbird had said -- about Aaron being his mate -- and his cheeks flush all over again. Aaron raises his brow but doesn't comment, thankfully. 

"He thought you were a predator." Greg's voice is a little quiet and meek. "I'm sorry he got in your face, you scared him. You're so, yanno, big."

Aaron's brow raises higher and Greg coughs to clear his throat. 

"So you _did_ whistle at that bird?" 

"I uh-- I talked to him. Yeah. To tell him you were a good guy. Well, and to shut up because he was like… they're all horny in the spring."

Aaron stifles a laugh, covering his mouth. 

"Relatable." Aaron's still laughing and Greg rubs at the bridge of his nose again. 

Why did Aaron have to say that? He doesn't _need_ to know this. 

Greg doesn't know why he decides to respond. 

"Yeah when I told him to stop, he asked if you were my mate." 

Aaron stares and Greg looks up at the ceiling. When would today be over? Was it possible Girardi would allow him to go home if he claimed he had a migraine? Aaron sits down and bumps him with his shoulder. 

"What'd you tell him?"

Greg burns red. 

"I told him to go away." 

"Did he?"

"No, he went back to the dugout talking about how pretty he was." Greg snorts a little. 

"Does that work?" 

Greg looks at Aaron. 

"What?" 

"Talking about how pretty he is?" 

"It works on birds." 

"Hm." 

Greg finishes the bottle of water he's drinking and crushes it before standing up. He wonders if he'll finally get some peace and he goes to leave but Aaron grabs his wrist. 

Aaron's standing now too. 

"Hey, Greg?"

Greg looks at Aaron and Aaron ducks in, pressing his mouth lightly to Greg's mouth. It's chaste and quick and heat spikes through Greg suddenly. 

"I'm pretty." Aaron laughs and Greg laughs too, and clasps his arms loosely around him.

"What you are is horrible." Greg briefly hugs Aaron and then steps back. "Let's get back out there, we'll talk about this later." 

Greg steps back out onto the field and listens to the birdsong, and for the first spring in a long time, it doesn't feel _that_ obnoxious.


End file.
